Latest / Marketing Automation with Fexingo: HubSpot, Marketo, and Automated Customer Journeys / Why Marketing Automation Ignores Your New Baby
Transcript
- Lucas: Luna, if you had a baby last month, how many emails do you think you got that still treated you like a childless person? I’m guessing dozens. Luna: Oh, easily. A friend of mine just had a baby girl in June, and she told me she's still getting weekly offers for pregnancy pillows and baby shower decorations. Lucas: Right, and that's the exact problem. Marketing automation is built on triggers—someone buys a crib, you send them diaper coupons. But a life event like a baby arriving rewrites a customer's entire context, and most platforms are terrible at detecting that shift. Luna: What's the gap, exactly? They have her purchase history. She bought a car seat, a stroller—clearly she had a baby. Lucas: You'd think so, but the trigger is often tied to the registry, not the birth. Brands like Target and Amazon rely on the registry completion event—the baby shower date. Once that passes, they assume the baby is here, but they don't update the product recommendations. So you get 'Welcome to Motherhood' offers that still include nursing pillows when your kid is already eight weeks old. Luna: And my friend said she got a 'Your due date is coming up!' email three weeks after she gave birth. She was not amused. Lucas: That's a classic automation fail. The due date was hard-coded into the CRM, and no one adjusted it when the baby arrived early. So the system kept firing based on the original date. Now, if these conversations have sparked something you've actually used in your own work—maybe a smarter trigger setup or a better data integration—we'd love for you to show that this ad-free show is worth a small contribution. If it was worth a coffee to you, the link is buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Luna: Yeah, it helps us keep digging into problems like this one. So back to that baby—what would it take for a brand to actually get it right? Lucas: A few things. First, they need a signal that the baby has arrived. That could be the completion of a registry—if someone checks off 'received' on a bunch of items, or if they start buying diapers in a specific size. But many systems treat those as separate journeys. Luna: So it's a data silo problem. The registry team doesn't talk to the email team. Lucas: Exactly. And even if they do, privacy is a huge concern. Public birth records exist in the US, but using them for marketing is sketchy. Most brands won't touch that. So they rely on explicit opt-ins, like asking the customer to update their profile: 'Are you expecting? Did the baby arrive?' But who does that? Luna: Hardly anyone. I've never updated a profile to say my kid is now a toddler. Lucas: Right. So the better approach is to infer the life event from behavioral changes. If a customer stops buying prenatal vitamins and starts buying baby food pouches in volume, that's a pretty good signal. But most automation platforms are still locked into discrete trigger events, not trend shifts over time. Luna: That seems like a machine learning application. Feed in a few months of purchase data and let the model detect the inflection point. Lucas: Yes, and some retailers are doing that. But the challenge is the cold start—when a new parent has no purchase history for baby products yet. They might have bought everything from a different account or in-store with cash. Luna: That's a huge blind spot. My friend actually switched to buying most baby stuff at a local boutique, so her Target profile didn't capture the shift. Lucas: And that's exactly why cross-channel identity resolution matters. If Target could see that she stopped buying adult clothes and started using their pharmacy more often for baby-related items, they might piece it together. But most retailers aren't there yet. Luna: So the result is that new parents get bombarded with irrelevant offers, and brands waste money on emails that get deleted instantly. Lucas: Worse—they annoy customers who are already sleep-deprived and short on patience. I think the brands that get this right will have a loyalty advantage. If you can be the one company that stops sending baby shower emails after the baby is born, you've earned some goodwill. Luna: What about using third-party data? Some companies sell life-stage lists based on public records. Lucas: They do, but the accuracy is hit or miss. And privacy regulations are tightening. Plus, relying on a purchased list feels lazy. The real opportunity is to build journeys that adapt to the customer's pace. For example, a baby registry doesn't have to end at the shower date—it can shift into a 'new parent' journey that asks: how old is your baby now? That's one more question—but combined with purchase data, it changes everything. Luna: And that question could be asked via email or app, not just profile page. People are more willing to answer if it's in context. Lucas: Exactly. 'Help us help you: when did your little one arrive?' You get a simple dropdown, and the system resets all triggers. Luna: That would have saved my friend a lot of annoyance. She actually unsubscribed from three retailers because they kept treating her as if she were pregnant. Lucas: And that's the cost of ignoring life events. Every unsubscribe is a lost lifetime value. A customer who just had a baby is about to spend thousands over the next few years—on diapers, formula, clothes, toys, eventually big-ticket items. If you alienate them in the first month, you're out. Luna: So the key is building a system that can detect when a customer's identity changes—not just what they bought, but what stage of life they're in. Lucas: Right. And it's not just babies. The same logic applies to weddings, moves, retirement, divorce. But the baby moment is especially high-leverage because the spending shift is so dramatic and time-bound. Luna: Do you think AI will eventually solve this? Like, an algorithm that watches all your purchases and emails and figures out your life stage without you having to say anything? Lucas: Technically, yes. But there's a creepiness factor. There's a fine line between helpful and intrusive. If a brand sends you a congratulations email the day after you get home from the hospital, that could feel great or really invasive, depending on how they got the info. Luna: I think most people would appreciate it if it's opt-in. Like, if I voluntarily told a retailer I just had a baby, I'd expect them to adjust accordingly. Lucas: Exactly. The solution isn't more data without consent—it's better use of the data the customer has already given you. And for the baby case, the simplest fix is to segment based on the baby's actual birth date, not the estimated due date. That means you need a way to update that field. Luna: Which brings us back to the registry check-off. If a customer marks a bunch of items as received, that's a strong signal. Lucas: Or even the overnight shipping of last-minute items. Any behavioral signal that says 'the baby is here now' should trump the planned date. The tools exist—it's just a matter of connecting them. Luna: So the real enemy is rigid workflows that assume life moves on a calendar. And the fix is flexibility. Lucas: That's the most overlooked principle in marketing automation: your customers' lives aren't linear. Your triggers shouldn't be either. If you can design a journey that adapts to actual events, you'll win the long-term relationship.